


The Art of Communication

by florisuga



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florisuga/pseuds/florisuga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prior to his arrival, Changkyun had built up a reputation; he was efficient and silent, vanishing before the arrow in his target's chest had finished quivering. His background is nothing to scoff at. Then again, neither is Hyungwon's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Communication

Hyungwon has been studying the art of combat for years; he has an ingrained appreciation for the complexity of a fight, for the dexterity and endurance and creativity born of desperation. Every movement he makes is precise, a fine balance between elegance and efficiency in the midst of chaos, an art form that Hyungwon has practiced tirelessly to perfect. 

And then, one day, Hyungwon is standing over the body of a rogue agent, a pincushion for arrows that came from out of _nowhere._ He's scanning the room when Kihyun's voice comes over his earpiece to wonder _how would you feel about a new partner,_ his tone factual, the question rhetorical.

"Don't worry," someone calls down from the top of the staircase. Their voice echoes through the empty warehouse, an annoying overlap to the feedback over the earpiece they’re still speaking into regardless. "I promise that I'm fun."

—

“He’ll be an asset,” Kihyun tells Hyungwon the next time they meet in person. He doesn’t look up from the blueprint on his computer.

“You believe that even less than I do,” Hyungwon tells him. 

Kihyun taps at his keyboard impatiently and offers a dismissive shrug. The stiffness in his left shoulder is only barely noticeable, now.

“How long will he be here?” Hyungwon asks. He doesn’t expect an answer--he thinks, for a moment, that he already knows what it is. It was the same for Hyunwoo, after all.

But Kihyun sighs, drawn-out and exaggerated. He says, “As long as he needs to be, I guess,” and shoves himself away from his work station.

—

"I've been watching you guys," Changkyun says. He takes a sip of his coffee and recoils. "But not in, like, a creepy way."

Hyungwon shifts his gaze from the man they've been tracking since dusk to focus on Changkyun. "You were planning on assassinating us."

Changkyun inclines his head. "Maybe it was kind of a creepy way," he admits.

There is something casual and jovial about Changkyun's tone, somewhere between light-hearted taunting and something _else_ , and it throws Hyungwon off. He frowns and turns his attention back to their target.

Observations are not Hyungwon's preferred type of mission; it is a mundane task of following targets to restaurants and malls and homes and alleyways, watching and waiting and _nothing happening._ Once, when Jooheon was crouching low around the corner of a facility they infiltrated, he told Hyungwon to _think of it as recon,_ voice muted but edged with anticipation.

"He's not going anywhere for a while," Changkyun says. 

"How do you know?" Hyungwon asks.

Changkyun answers, "Just a feeling," and takes another sip of his coffee. Again, he grimaces.

Irritation creeps through Hyungwon, an insidious and persistent _itch_ threatening to turn into something stronger. "Stop drinking that if you don't like it," Hyungwon tells him.

"I’m not sure if I like it or not." Changkyun stares at his cup for a moment, and then asks, "You're paying for this, right?"

Hyungwon watches Changkyun, whose expression is unreadable. Eventually, Hyungwon says, "Apparently," and hopes that it's harsh enough to sting.

—

Minhyuk pulls Hyungwon off to the side and tells him, "Everybody is miserable."

Hyungwon asks, "Why do you say that?" more out of reflex than curiosity.

"Listen." Minhyuk throws an arm around Hyungwon's shoulders and leans in, awkward but reassuring. "Things have been changing around here, but we're still a team, you know? We make things work."

(They do. Hyungwon remembers their first mission together: an ambush in their headquarters, the steady beat of helicopters rapidly approaching, and someone yelling to _take cover_ as a force threw itself into the wave of enemies with such wild fury that everything in its path was _decimated._ And then: bodies everywhere. Running. Clawing. Collapsing. A whirlwind of action that had Hyungwon reacting on instinct, adrenaline rush sending a thrill through his body until the last enemy fell.

It had been a chaotic mess, unpredictable and over as quickly as it began. There had been no preparation. Their weapons were still in development. Support was on the other side of the city. 

They made it work.

At least when Hyungwon was staring down the barrel of a gun, he could recognize the enemy.)

"Just talk to us, okay?" Minhyuk says.

Hyungwon tells him, "Talking probably won't help if there's an arrow aimed at my face."

Minhyuk sighs, long-suffering but full of fondness. "Trust me," he says. And then, as he starts to move away: "He seems like he'd wait until your back was turned anyway."

—

(After their first mission, once Kihyun's arm had been reset and he was cleared to return to his work, Kihyun hissed to no one in particular, "How is this an asset?"

He tossed away the mangled piece of armor that was once his suit's arm, now no more than scrap metal hardly worth recycling. 

Hyunwoo mumbled _sorry_ from his work station further down the laboratory table. His tone was soft and genuine, a jarring contrast to the inhuman sounds from when he threw Kihyun into the wall.

Kihyun said, venomous, "We're supposed to trust someone who can't even control himself?" His shoulders were hunched and his eyes were focused; he was ready to _strike._

But then Hoseok cut in and said, "He controls himself better than you control your suit."

The room fell silent, but in the hallway, Minhyuk laughed.)

—

Across from the restaurant, on the opposite side of the street and obscured by the tree on the corner, their target is speaking with a man Hyungwon has never seen before. Under his breath, Changkyun says, “This’ll be fun.”

Hyungwon leans against the door to the rooftop and takes a deep breath, the smell of coffee and pastries from below drowned by the fumes of gasoline and tar. He breathes, “If you say so.”

“Think of it as a team-building activity. Hoseok says that we need to work on our trust anyway,” Changkyun tells him from his perch on the edge of the roof. “Here, come stand next to me, and we’ll trust that we won’t push each other off.”

A noise that isn’t quite a laugh escapes from Hyungwon, a short and insincere breath of a sound. “Won’t we?”

“Seriously. I’ll catch you if you fall, or whatever.” Changkyun assures him, “I wouldn’t want this restaurant to lose business because someone died on their sidewalk.”

“But you hate this restaurant,” Hyungwon says.

Changkyun turns around, wearing an expression that Hyungwon can’t recognize in the shadows cast by the street lamps below. “See?” He says, “We _are_ getting to know each other.” 

He continues to speak, but the rest of his reply is lost amid the wail of sirens, and Hyungwon doesn’t make an effort to pick out his words.

—

(“Conversation,” Kihyun once told Hyungwon, “is overrated.”

Beside him, Hoseok scoffed and said, “You’re just mad that you’re terrible at multitasking.”

The progress Kihyun had made on reconstructing the arm of his suit was impressive, considering the damage. Hyungwon tracked his movements as he switched back and forth between welding the armor and manipulating the blueprint hovering in the air before him, every adjustment precise and without room for error. 

“Maybe your problem is that you’re not saying the right things,” Minhyuk told him.

Kihyun frowned and swiped his blueprint away with a little more force than seemed necessary. “Maybe other people aren’t saying the right things either.”)

—

It does not take long for Hyungwon to learn that Changkyun is good at what he does. Disconcertingly good, even, considering.

“The past is in the past,” Changkyun tells him. He nocks an arrow, and then it is _flying_ \--pulled taught one second and lodged deep into their target’s heart the next, a split-second from Hyungwon’s eye. 

Hyungwon wonders, briefly, if Changkyun had missed. 

Changkyun continues, “I’m a different person than I was a couple of weeks ago.”

Hyungwon spins, letting his momentum build up the force to drive his knife into the last enemy’s neck.

Changkyun pulls another arrow from his quiver. “People change,” he says. There is an unidentifiable edge to his words. Sincerity, maybe. Hyungwon is suddenly uncomfortable.

“Are you talking about you,” Hyungwon asks, “or me?”

Changkyun smiles, knowing.

—

(In the weeks that followed Hyunwoo’s arrival, tension settled in their headquarters, stagnant and suffocating and nearly tangible.

“They’ll let anyone in anymore,” Kihyun said, short and without any malice, defeated. He manipulated his mechanized arm once again, reaching for the nearest glass of water and only hesitating a few times in the process with sudden, jerking movements. Functional, mostly.

“He’s good,” Jooheon said and then gestured at the glass in Kihyun’s hand, water and arm still trembling with effort. “Better than this, if it puts you out for a month.”

Kihyun set the glass down, and rose from his chair, and said nothing.)

—

When Hyungwon is in the field, he is a different person--he lives in _this_ moment, _now,_ when he is right on top of an enemy and responding blow by blow: dodge, strike, block, counter... this is art, and Hyungwon _excels._

“You do make a mess, though,” Changkyun tells him and then kicks over one of the bodies, battered and broken and face-down in its own blood.

Hyungwon sighs. “Everyone’s a critic,” he mumbles. It comes out easy and light. Friendly, even. 

The corner of Changkyun’s mouth curls up, a little.

—

Changkyun has a thrill for the chase: pursuit, watching, evaluating any number of options to bring targets down in the most effective, or entertaining, way possible.

 _All work and no play,_ Changkyun tells him once.

Hyungwon leans back into his seat. From the car windows, he watches the blur of traffic and trees pass by. The low drone of tires on pavement is accompanied only by the radio static of a signal trying to come through.

“You’re very weird,” Hyungwon says, unprompted. Somewhere in the row of seats behind him, he hears Changkyun hum, low and unperturbed.

“You think of killing people as an art form,” Changkyun says, “but I’m the weird one?”

The static over the radio persists, constant and grating.

—

(When their team was first formed, Kihyun helped design their training facility; his research was critical in the development of the programs and devices that became part of their everyday routine. He painstakingly evaluated each of their strengths and weaknesses to create a new method of disaster preparation. Everyone had been accounted for, every tool precisely gauged.

And then, they went on their first mission with Hyunwoo.

Hyunwoo was opposite ends of the spectrum. One moment: sturdy, calm, indifferent. And then, when another part of himself took control: unpredictable. Dangerous. Their double-edged sword that divided their team between keeping him around or forcing him to stay at a distance, but united them in their desire to _win_.

They had found common ground as a team by alienating others. The thought was ironic and depressing.

"We'd be sending him back into the field without knowing what he's capable of," Kihyun argued.

Jooheon shot back, "Then how are we going to find out?"

It was a debate their team held many times before but which never made any progress. Until, one day, Minhyuk said, "Maybe we should ask him."

Kihyun sighed, but later that afternoon, as everyone was leaving, Hyungwon saw Hyunwoo's contact information on Kihyun's desk.)

—

On the nights when Hyungwon can’t sleep, he goes to the practice room and trains. He finds solace during these times, late at night, a bleary-eyed and heavy-limbed reassurance of skill.

“Oh,” Changkyun says when Hyungwon enters the room one night. He doesn’t bother feigning surprise. “Good morning.”

“What are you doing here?” Hyungwon asks, but then reconsiders; he’s tired, exhausted from a long day of sitting and and doing nothing. He rephrases: “What do you want?”

Changkyun stretches, reaches high toward the ceiling and then lowers his arms to his sides following the arc of his bow, slow and easy. “I want to sleep, but that’s clearly not going to happen. So.”

Across the room, a row of targets line the wall, their centers decorated with arrows still quivering.

Hyungwon’s fingers curl as he feels the familiar itch of irritation beginning to creep through him. He considers walking away to lose himself in a battle simulation and distract his thoughts with the anticipation. And then, he realizes, that maybe conversation requires just as much strategy. 

He moves himself to sit on the bench next to Changkyun and forces himself to relax. It’s easy enough; acting is a skill not unfamiliar to him.

“Is being here everything that you’d hoped it would be?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” Changkyun says, but his lips purse a bit. “The aversion that you’ve all shown toward me has been very welcoming.”

Hyungwon feels the corner of his mouth twitch. “That hasn’t concerned you?”

Without missing a beat, Changkyun replies, “Hasn’t it concerned you?”

In the mirrors along the opposite wall, Hyungwon meets Changkyun’s eyes. They are bright, alert, and unwavering.

—

(Hyungwon was never quite sure, exactly, about what had changed. But over time, after numerous missions and training sessions and long nights spent in the lab, a dynamic in their team was different. All of them settled into a sort of familiarity that could not quite be called friendship--a cautious acceptance and fascination that persisted even after they returned from the field.

One night, Hyungwon heard Kihyun confess to Hoseok that _we might be onto something,_ hushed and tentative, as though speaking too loud would cause something to shatter. A distance away, poring over a log book, Hyunwoo nodded.)

It’s odd, Hyungwon thinks, how history repeats itself.

—

Prior to his arrival, Changkyun had built up a reputation; he was efficient and silent, vanishing before the arrow in his target’s chest had finished quivering. His background is nothing to scoff at. Then again, neither is Hyungwon’s.

“For what it’s worth,” Hyungwon tells him one day, honestly, “you don’t completely fall short of my expectations.”

Changkyun laughs. It is a short bark of a sound, and the most genuine thing that Hyungwon has heard from him yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [yubat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/yubat) for her lovely beta work, as always.


End file.
